The Twelfth Card

Boyd shook his head. “From what he told me, al-Dahab was working alone. I suspect he talked to people over in the Middle East some. But nobody here. He didn’t trust anyone.” The Texas drawl came and went, as if he’d been working on losing it.

Sachs said ominously, “If you’re lying, if something happens to her, we can make sure the rest of your life’s totally miserable.”

“How?” Boyd asked, genuinely curious, it seemed.

“You killed the librarian, Dr. Barry. You attacked and tried to kill police officers. You could get consecutive lifetimes. And we’re looking into the death of a girl yesterday on Canal Street. Somebody pushed her in front of a bus near where you were escaping from Elizabeth Street. We’re ru

A shrug. “Doesn’t hardly matter.”

“You don’t care?” Sachs asked.

“I know you people don’t understand me. I don’t blame you. But, see, I don’t care about prison. I don’t care about anything. Y’all can’t really touch me. I’m dead already. Killing somebody doesn’t matter to me, saving a life doesn’t matter.” He glanced at Amelia Sachs, who was staring at him. Boyd said, “I see that look. You’re wond’ring what kinda monster is this fella? Well, fact is, y’all made me who I am.”

“We did?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, ma’am…You know my profession.”

“Executions control officer,” Rhyme said.

“Yes, sir. Now something I’ll tell you ’bout that line of work: You can find the names of every human legally executed in these United States. Which is a lot. And you can find the names of all the governors who waited up till midnight or whenever to commute them if the inclination was there. You can find the names of all the victims the condemned murdered, and much of the time the names of their next of kin. But do you know the one name you won’t find?”

He looked at the officers around him. “Us people who push the button. The executioners. We’re forgotten. Ever’body thinks ’bout how capital punishment affects the families of the condemned. Or society. Or the victims’ families. Not to mention the man or woman gets put down like a dog in the process. But nobody ever spends a drop of sweat on us executioners. Nobody ever stops and thinks what happens to us.

“Day after day, living with our people – men, women too, course, who’re go

“Course, even the guilty ones’re human beings too. Living with all of them, day after day. Being decent to them because they’re decent to you. Getting to know ’em. And then…then you kill ’em. You, all by yourself. With your own hands, pushing the button, throwing the switch…It changes you.

“You know what they say? You heard it. ‘Dead man walking.’ It’s supposed to mean the prisoner. But it’s really us. The executioners. We’re the dead men.”

Sachs muttered, “But your girlfriend? How could you shoot her?”

He fell silent. For the first time a darkness clouded his face. “I pondered firing that shot. I’d hoped maybe I’d have this feeling that I shouldn’t do it. That she meant too much to me. I’d let her be and run, just take my chances. But…” He shook his head. “Didn’t happen. I looked at her and all I felt was numb. And I knew that it’d make sense to shoot her.”

“And if the children had been home and not her?” Sachs gasped. “You’d’ve shot one of them to escape?”

He considered this for a moment. “Well, ma’am, I guess we know that would’ve worked, wouldn’t it? You would’ve stopped to save one of the girls ’stead of coming after me. Like my daddy told me: It’s only a question of where you put the decimal point.”

The darkness seemed to lift from his face, as if he’d finally received some answer or come to some conclusion in a debate that had been troubling him for a long time.

The Hanged Man…The card often foretells a surrendering to experience, ending a struggle, accepting what is.

He glanced at Rhyme. “Now, you don’t mind, I think it’s time for me to get back home.”

“Home?”

He looked at them curiously. “Jail.”

As if, what else would he possibly mean?

Father and daughter got off the C train at 135th street and started east, toward Langston Hughes High.

She hadn’t wanted him to come but he’d insisted on looking after her – which Mr. Rhyme and Detective Bell had insisted on too. Besides, she reflected, he’d be back in Buffalo by tomorrow and she supposed she could tolerate an hour or two with him.

He nodded back at the subway. “Used to love to write on C trains. Paint stuck real nice…I knew a lot of people’d see it. Did an end-to-end in 1976. It was the Bicente

Geneva grunted. She was thinking that she had a story to tell him. A block away she could see the construction scaffolding in front of the same building she’d been working on when she’d been fired. How’d her father like to know that her job had been scrubbing graffiti off the redeveloped buildings? Maybe she’d even erased some of his. Tempted to tell him. But she didn’t.

At the first working pay phone they found on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Geneva stopped, fished for some change. Her father offered her his cell phone.

“That’s okay.”

“Take it.”

She ignored him, dropped the coins in and called Lakeesha, while her father pocketed his cell and wandered to the curb, looking around the neighborhood like a boy in front of the candy section in a bodega.

She turned away as her friend answered. “’Lo?”

“It’s all over with, Keesh.” She explained about the jewelry exchange, the bombing.

“That what was goin’ on? Damn. A terrorist? That some scary shit. But you okay?”

“I’m down. Really.”

Geneva heard another voice, a male one, saying something to her friend, who put her hand over the receiver for a moment. Their muted exchange seemed heated.

“You there, Keesh?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s that?”

“Nobody. Where you at? You not in that basement crib no more, right?”

“I’m still where I told you – with that policeman and his girlfriend. The one in the wheelchair.”

“You there now?”

“No, I’m Uptown. Going to school.”

“Now?”

“Pick up my homework.”

The girl paused. Then: “Listen, I’ma hook up with you at school. Wa

Geneva glanced at her father, nearby, hands in his pockets, still surveying the street. She decided she didn’t want to mention him to Keesha, or anybody else, just yet.

“Let’s make it tomorrow, Keesh. I don’t have any time now.”

“Daymn, girl.”

“Really. Better tomorrow.”

“Wha-ever.”

Geneva heard the click of the disco

Finally she joined him and they continued toward the school.

“You know what was up there, three or four blocks?” he asked, pointing north. “Strivers Row. You ever seen it?

“No,” she muttered.

“I’ll take you up there sometime. Hundred years ago, this land developer fellow, named King, he built these three big apartments and tons of town houses. Hired three of the best architects in the country and told ’em to go to work. Beautiful places. King Model Homes was the real name but they were so expensive and so nice, this’s the story, the place was called Strivers Row ’cause you had to strive to live there. W. C. Handy lived there for a time. You know him? Father of the blues. Most righteous musician ever lived. I did a ’piece up that way one time. I ever tell you about that? Took me thirty cans to do. Wasn’t a throw-up; I spent two days on it. Did a picture of W. C. himself. Photographer from the Times shot it and put it in the paper.” He nodded north. “It was there for -”